‘I am DCC Crime,’ he replied, ‘until he tells me otherwise. I don’t feel the need to report on every operational matter. Now, let’s get inside; it’s bloody freezing out here.’
As it transpired, next morning I beat Mario to the punch, but only just. Pye and Haddock were still recovering from my surprise, and perfectly timed, arrival when the phone rang. As soon as I heard Sammy say, ‘Yes, sir,’ I knew that he was being given the message.
‘So,’ he said, smiling as he hung up, ‘just like old times.’
‘No,’ I countered, ‘my role will be advisory, that’s all.’
‘I know what your role will be, boss,’ he laughed. ‘That’s just been made clear. Where do we begin?’’
I took one of the two uncomfortable chairs in the room and motioned Haddock towards the other. ‘Bring me up to speed, please, from the time when you asked me to identify Dean Francey.’
I sat back and listened as they related every detail of their investigation in a shared presentation style that they seemed to have developed. It struck me that for a fairly junior DS, young Sauce wasn’t slow to offer a view, but it neither surprised nor annoyed me. He’s always been that way and he will be all the way up to the top of the tree, where he’s headed.
Some of it I knew from the media, but I didn’t know of Hector Mackail’s naval background. I did my best to stay impassive when Sammy dropped those pieces of information, but I made a mental note to chide Carrie McDaniels for not digging a little deeper into the man.
The fact that he was dead, and the circumstances of his demise, were hugely significant for me, but I sat on that initially. Instead I focused on the journalist Macy’s pillow talk gossip about a confrontation between Mackail and my client, Eden Higgins.
‘Knocked him down a flight of stairs, she said?’
Haddock nodded. ‘And smashed his ankle.’
‘That explains why Eden was limping when we met,’ I said.
‘We’ve been thinking it might also explain why Mackail wound up squashed against a wall.’
‘I wouldn’t spend too much time on that thought,’ I told the youngster. ‘I don’t believe for one second that Eden Higgins would countenance anything as foolish as that. There was a known connection between them and, besides, the man Mackail was already broken, financially.’
‘What about the minder Macy mentioned?’ Pye asked. ‘Could he have taken it into his own hands?’
‘Walter Hurrell is a volatile and potentially dangerous man,’ I conceded. ‘But he wouldn’t act on his own initiative. No, I believe we, sorry, you, should focus on the naval connection, Mackail and Zena’s dad, with a third man in the equation.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘His name was Jock Hodgson,’ I said. ‘He was the inside man on the theft of Eden Higgins’ boat and he’s just as dead as Mackail. He’s also ex-Navy. I want to know whether the two of them and Gates ever served together.’
‘We wondered the same about Mackail and Gates,’ Sauce volunteered, ‘but Gates seems to be a no-go area. The Ministry of Defence won’t say a word about him.’
‘You can leave that to me,’ I told him. ‘I’m not going to ask the MoD.’
Sammy Pye rocked slightly in my battered old chair. ‘What’s your thinking on this, boss?’ he ventured.
I didn’t bother to correct the ‘boss’, for at that time, effectively I was. ‘I won’t go there yet,’ I replied. ‘I need confirmation on a few things. What I’d like to do now is make a couple of phone calls; then I’m going to take you guys for lunch.’
Fifty-Four
‘I need some more information,’ I told Clyde Houseman. ‘Some of it I could get from the Ministry of Defence, but I don’t have time to wrestle with their bureaucracy.’
‘Will I have to clear it with my boss?’ he asked.
‘Part of it, no; but I don’t mind if you check with her. I’d phone her myself but I’m sure she’s busy enough already.’
‘Meaning I’m not.’ He chuckled softly.
‘Meaning you’re not the Director of MI5; one day, maybe, but not yet. I need information on three people, all of them Navy, like Walter Hurrell. The names are Jock Hodgson . . . although I’d guess that might be John in the records . . . Hector Mackail, and David Gates. The first two have left the service, but are recently deceased; the third is still operational. I know that Mackail and Gates